Stone Romance (Stone Passion #2) (2 page)

She felt the bed shift as Melanie sat down next to her. As Melanie wrapped her arms around her thin body, Jenna stiffened, unable to bear Melanie’s compassion when she was so damaged. She held herself stiffly until Melanie’s lips pressed against the top of her head and she whispered, “
It’s
okay, Jenna; I’ve got you.”

Her lower lip trembled a moment before the tears began to spill once more, before her body broke and began to shake uncontrollably. As Melanie continued to hold her, rock her, love her, Jenna could only cry harder.

“You’ve had to be strong for so long,” Melanie whispered, the words a poisoned dart to Jenna’s heart. “But you’re not alone, Jenna;
it’s
okay to ask for help.”

“You’ve already given up so much,” Jenna managed to choke out, clutching onto her sister as the world careened out of control. This was what she feared by giving in to tears, this chaos and despair that engulfed her.

“I’d give up everything for you and Ferris,” Lenni vowed with such passion, such conviction, it shattered Jenna’s soul because in truth Melanie had already given up everything. And every time Lenni had reached out to help, Jenna had ignored it. But no longer; she was no longer going to be a wraith sleepwalking through life.

And some day, she would learn to smile again, laugh again. And she would find a way to pay Melanie back for holding onto the life line and never letting go, never giving up, until Jenna was ready to be saved.

Jenna scrubbed her fingers through her chin length hair and stared at her sister as if she had finally gone mad. “What do you mean you invited Vaughn’s brothers to go with us? I thought this was just going to be the three of us tonight?”

Melanie looked up, pausing a moment from putting Ferris’s long, brown hair into French braids. “Well, Ferris and I thought you might like to meet Rhys but it seemed rude to invite only one of Vaughn’s brothers so we invited both of them. Though I doubt you’ll have to worry about Armand; he will probably refuse to join us. He’s not a big fan of fun. Or me.”

Jenna closed her eyes and took a couple of slow breaths to calm the tide of irritation and trepidation that was rising in her chest. “I highly doubt my daughter had anything to do with your mad scheme to set me up with Rhys; you’ve been talking of little else all month.”

Melanie tied off Ferris’s hair and then wrapped her arms around the little girl in a hug. With a dazzling smile curving her lips, her blue eyes sparkled mischievously and Jenna wanted to groan in exasperation knowing that her sister was going to get her way, as she usually did. Ferris wore an eerily similar expression and once again Jenna had the thought that Ferris was meant to be Melanie’s daughter and not hers. “I’m sure I’ve talked about other things, Jen; it just so happens that Ferris and I agree on this. Rhys is such a great guy and Ferris already adores him.”

Jenna ground her teeth together, not ready to just dive right in to the dating scene again. It was only a few short weeks ago that she decided she was ready to test the waters and if Rhys was anything like his brother, he was an entire ocean. “I told you that I’m not interested in meeting him. If I start dating, it’s not going to be with your boyfriend’s younger brother. Has he even graduated from high school yet?”

Melanie snorted, taking absurd delight in Jenna’s question. Ferris looked over her shoulder at her aunt and the two of them started laughing maniacally, their minds linked by some invisible thread that Jenna would never understand. Flinging herself onto the couch, she sighed in resignation, knowing she was going to have to wait for her daughter and her sister to stop giggling before a normal conversation would be allowed to continue.

God, Melanie and Ferris even looked like mother and daughter, with their similarly elegant noses and the shape of their eyes and their long, chocolate brown hair, though Ferris’s hair was a shade or two darker. The only difference between Ferris and Melanie was the color of their eyes; Ferris’s eyes were an unusual shade of bluish-green, while Melanie had blue eyes the color of the summer sky, the same shade as Jenna’s

Though she shared similar facial features with Melanie and the same shape and color of eyes, Jenna’s hair was black as midnight and short, just brushing her chin.
Even though
she had chopped off the locks in a moment of bleak despair it was simply
easier to keep her hair short, especially with a baby.

Jenna’s eyes moved between Ferris and Melanie, a slight smile tipping her lips
. I
t was impossible not to love the two of them, even if
it
drove her nuts trying to understand them. They believed in fairy tales and magic, mystical creatures and happy ending
s
; Jenna no longer did. She knew that reality wasn’t nearly so wonderful and she couldn’t pretend
, no matter how badly she wanted to at times
. Granted, it had its moments but life was dark and painful and some days it was all she could do to get through the day without worrying about the bottom being jerked out from under her again. And she wasn’t sure if she would have the strength to struggle back from the abyss again.

Of course, Melanie could never understand
Jenna’s
reservations
. Her sister
had never loved someone so much, planned to spend the rest of her li
fe with him, only to lose him
in a heartbeat.
Lenni
led a charmed existence, untouched by the darker side of life, blissfully unaware of the harsh realities most people experienced. Throughout high school, Melanie was the imaginative one that everyone wanted to protect and shelter; she was the one with a dreamy smile on her lips as she waltzed through a life filled with magic.

Even now, she found the perfect, albeit tiny, apartment and she was madly in love with a drop dead gorgeous man that was madly in love with her. Vaughn worshipped Melanie, looking at her as if she hung the stars and the moon, watching her as if he would protect her with his life. It would shock Jenna if the man didn’t propose within a fortnight, three weeks tops.

And Jenna wished her sister all of the happiness in the world; she just wished Melanie wouldn’t try setting her up with Vaughn’s brother. She had barely just made the decision to dip her toes in the water again; she wasn’t ready for anything serious. Serious simply hurt too much.

As long as she didn’t think about
Jeremy and what her life could have been
too much she was okay, but when she was alone at night, the
what if
’s started crooning their worrying song in her head. The last thing she needed was a date with some prepubescent man
-
child who was only interested in sex. High school boys were all about the race to the finish and not the journey along the way. Even Jeremy sometimes had difficulties making it last but he had loved her and because they had been so young, sex was all about fumbling in the dark and clumsy penetrations.

Occasionally Jeremy had surprised her with extended foreplay, despite her furious blushes and feeble protests
. O
nce, probably the night Ferris was conceived, she came with him inside her. Letting out a long sigh, she realized that it had been
over
six and a half years since she had an orgasm that wasn’t the result of her own manipulations.

“He’s not a child, Jenna; he’s a full
y
grown man,” Melanie managed to get out between giggles
, pulling Jenna back into their conversation
. “Why would you think otherwise?”

Jenna’s brows drew together in a puzzled frown; she wasn’t sure why she thought Rhys
would be so
young. Probably because Vaughn didn’t look very old, maybe
mid-twenties,
and Melanie kept referring to Rhys as his younger brother. And some of the stories she told, mainly the ones where Rhys was able to eat everything in sight and not gain an ounce, made Jenna think of teenage boys, with their hummingbird metabolism and dinosaur appetites. “Then is he a frat boy?”

Maybe an overgrown frat boy wouldn’t be so bad; there would be no chance of a deeper relationship. But getting involved with Melanie’s boyfriend’s brother was a bad idea for a million different reasons, the least of which was the awkwardness of having to see him afterwards when things didn’t work out. And if Melanie married Vaughn, family gatherings would become something to be avoided like the plague and that was not something Jenna wanted to contemplate; she really liked her family.

“Rhys is not a frat boy, either,” Melanie chuckled. “He’s gorgeous and funny and has a set of abs to die for.”

Jenna smirked, one side of her mouth quirking upwards in a disbelieving smile, “And he’s not a frat boy? Any guy who has abs to die for tends to be gay or a total narcissist; which one is Rhys?”

Melanie opened her mouth to answer but the sound of someone knocking at the door cut off the words before they formed. Her smile grew impossibly wider as she crossed the miniscule distance to the door, throwing the words over her shoulder, “You’ll see in a moment.”

As she watched her daughter rush to catch up to Melanie, a brilliant smile on her little face, Jenna covered her face with her hand and chuckled softly. She would never win against those two. Peaking at the newcomers from between two fingers, her laughter died in her throat as a breathtakingly beautiful man with absurdly long hair wrapped his arms around Melanie and hugged her, picking her up and spinning her in a circle before setting her down. And
then he bent down and as he greeted Ferris, his smile soften
ed
to one of genuine affection.

Without hesitation, Ferris stepped into his arms and embraced him with all of her
five
-year-old exuberance, chattering away as he stood up with her
arms practically choking him as they hugged his neck.
Jenna’s heart did a little painful lurch in her chest as the image of Jeremy holding his daughter flashed in her mind, as it juxtaposed with the reality of this stranger holding Ferris. How could such a magnificent man look so natural holding a nearly six-year-old child?

His long, reddish-brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail and hung to the small of his back; long, thick strands of gorgeous auburn hair. And when he smiled, a dimple caressed his cheek and his brown eyes sparkled with amusement. The gorgeous stranger and Vaughn were definitely brothers; they shared similar facial features, from their stone-chiseled jaws to their straight noses and their full lips. But while Vaughn only had eyes for Melanie, Rhys was looking at her with avid curiosity.

There was a sense of familiarity about him, as if they had met before or knew one another in another life. Shaking her head to clear it of such ridiculous thoughts, she smiled wryly; she would have remembered meeting such an extraordinary man. And the longer he looked at her, the warmer his gaze became….

With a
self-conscious
gasp, Jenna was painfully reminded of her sprawling position: slouched on the couch with her palm over her face, gaping at the man as if she had never seen an incredibly attractive man before. Clumsily scrambling to her feet, she ran her hands over her short locks then over the front of her blouse, smoothing the wrinkles from the cotton material. She could feel the blush coloring her cheeks and she knew she was being ridiculous. Normally she wasn’t so bumbling, tongue-tied and gawky. In the real world she could strike up a conversation with even the most hardened of social misfits and put them at ease. Hell, in high school she had been the fun one, the daring one.

But that was a lifetime ago. Now she worked in
the frequently
dull but secure profession
of an accountant
and her social calendar consisted of play dates with mothers who had children Ferris’s age. Her social skills were widely out of practice and in the face of a dazzling smile they had disappeared. She really needed to get out more.

Pasting a smile to her frozen face, she wiped her palm against her thighs before holding it out towards the newcomer who still held her daughter. “Hi, you must be Rhys; I’m Jenna.”

He wrapped his strong fingers round her palm and brought her hand up to his mouth, pressing a heated kiss on her knuckles as his eyes darkened. Electrical currents shot up her arm and her skin burned where his lips pressed. He looked at her as if he knew her, as if he wanted to know her better, on a more intimate level
and her breath caught in her throat
. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Jenna; you’re even more beautiful than you are in the pictures Lenni has shown me.”